Ritual Reportage

Thursday, March 30, 2006

No:37

Ellan is the DJ she chooses 'Swimming Song' by Kate and Anna Mcgarrigle.

Ritual no 37: Look up the steps for hula hula in a book, practice them on a prominent bridge - think of Esther Williams

G – You mentioned it was interesting to practice rather than perform the hula dance steps in the ritual.

E- The fact that I had to look them up, then try to remember them, combined with the fact that I was dancing barefoot (as per the instructions for hula) made it a physically difficult task which I was concentrating on; I don't know whether you can see from the film that I’m smiling - but even that was a task rather than a performance or a spontaneous display of emotion - the hula instructions specified that you had to smile, and roll your eyes in the direction in which you're moving; plus, according to your instructions, I was trying to remember to think of Esther Williams as well, so both my mental and physical activity is defined and accounted for from the outset..

G- However there becomes interruptions in the steps sometimes, in the rules, an unsure move or an awkwardness, an unsmoothness. The possibility that the hula steps could become “found” evidence interests me. That rituals can include raw data?

E-I want to make works that are more like crime scenes or archaeological sites - a richness and density of subject and ideas, clues and traces which may resonate with a viewer. The rituals are an exploration of context - viewed as a film they can seem quite abstract; the addition of the song suggests a narrative, or an emotional content - and then the text which describes the actions of the ritual takes it back to a purely mechanistic level – it functions as both closed and open narrative.

G- a form of response to context? - a movement between author, reader, text, and intertext.

Live Reportage

Every second Thursday of the month we will be sending a three minute film to this blogg. People we meet will be given a list of rituals from which they choose one to perform.
We hope to create a sense of fictional continuity.

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their 'ungrammaticalness'
and as a form of response.

GilbertandGrape

How we use the word ritual

We see ritual as
being a set of prescribed rules:
A specific place, which can be imaginary
Action that can be arbitrary
Context that can be immersed in a certain stillness/mood.

The ruling is public,
clear and social, the meaning may be or it may be indeterminate, private and
individual. Everyday actions like brushing teeth, wearing shoes, cooking a meal
can become the action in a ritual. By naming these actions in our rituals we
hope to bring attention to a connection that can be made regardless of place
and position or religion, but a position or notion that belong whilst moving
as an undefined.

Any type of
behaviour may be said to turn into a ritual when it is stylized or formalized,
and made repetitive in that form
(S.F Nadel 1953)

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their ungrammatical
ness and as a form of response. We have talked about our collaboration being
something, which is a complex web of political viewpoints, and working through
performance rituals has allowed for an ambiguity of meaning and message
If we assume there must be a system to ritual or rules to organize its operation,
we might expect to recognize ungrammatical usage of the code, however
the ungrammatical is tolerated. Chaos, fragmentation, multiples, set amongst
clear set of prescribed rules describes our rituals. Prescribed rules and stylizations
are central to our work and the repetition of these even more so.